CID busts int’l gang ‘forging’ 60 cheques of firms worth KD 2.2m

07/05/2017

KUWAIT CITY, May 7: The Criminal Investigation Department, in particular the Financial Crimes Department, have arrested members of the largest international gang consisting of 13 people for manipulating and forging 60 cheques of large companies worth KD 2.2 million.

The criminal investigation team, working effortlessly for more than three weeks in cooperation with Interpol, managed to arrest five suspects in two Arab countries and eight inside Kuwait. According to security sources, the international network was working very proficiently using modern techniques and was skilled in their transactions.

The source said coincidence played an important role in the arrest of the network a citizen who allegedly signed a cheque for KD 98,000 was not authorized to sign a cheque of more than KD 50,000.

Giving the details of the case, the daily said, the arrest came when the director of a major company filed a complaint with the Director-General of the General Department of Criminal Investigation, Major General Mohammed Al-Sharhan.

In the complaint the director of the company said the company had discovered a big forgery, and was informed by the bank that a citizen had submitted cheque to cash KD 98,000 and that according to the company instructions, the signatory had no authority to sign a cheque for more than KD 50,000 and the beneficiary was subsequently requested to cash the cheque later.

The daily added, upon receiving the information Major- General Al-Sharhan formed a specialized financial team of financial crimes officers to discuss the details of the case and found out the original value of the cheque was KD 180 only. The daily added, the suspect was put under surveillance and his movements were monitored for a couple of days to know who his accomplices are.

It was later discovered that it was an international network that had robbed many companies; the team agreed with the Kuwaiti beneficiary that the money would be handed over to the Jordanian, who in turn sent a resident to receive the money.

During interrogation he agreed that they have been working with the Jordanian for some time, and recognized that the number of cheque received from different people exceeded the 60 cheques in large amounts of tens of thousands and did not discover the matter. The coordination team was able to arrest all the suspects inside Kuwait and coordinated with the Arab states to provide them with the names and statements of other accused.